Many stocks/futures/options brokers in HK and China use Sharppoint's SPTrader software for real-time price feed and placing orders. Some time ago, many of these brokers started offering a FREE service called SP Native API which allows end-users to write software program to extract price feed and place their own orders. It opened a new door to in-expensive automated trading.

In the past, end-users in Hong Kong and China can only use sophisticated trading platform like Interactive Brokers for automated program trading. However that platform is much less popular than Sharppoint's SPTrader in Hong Kong and it's protocol is a lot more complex than SP Native API.

Although much simpler, SP Native API still requires you to write a software program. Avidsoft Ltd has taken the hard work out of it by offering you Spark, a simple and easy to use software using SP Native API for live feed and placing orders.